IBM Achieves Fastest Growth Among Top Three External Disk Storage Vendors, According to Leading Research Firm

ARMONK, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- March 2, 2006 -- IBM today announced the fastest external disk
storage systems revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2005 among the top
three external disk storage vendors, according to data released by IDC(1).
Growing 47 percent worldwide, IBM outpaced both EMC and Hewlett-Packard.

The report also indicates that IBM outgrew EMC and HP for the year, with
IBM external disk storage systems achieving 24 percent full year revenue
growth as measured by IDC. IBM was also the only one of the three top
vendors to increase its revenue share year over year, and saw the largest
fourth quarter revenue share increase of any individual vendor reported by
IDC.

"There's a sea change occurring in the storage industry, causing customers
to increasingly consider and adopt IBM's storage technology as they are
faced with escalating requirements to capture and store data," said Andy
Monshaw, general manager of IBM Storage. "One key driver is our belief in
open systems that free customers from the proprietary lock of a single
vendor. IBM's Virtualization Engine offerings, including SAN Volume
Controller, are designed to help release customers from vendor lock-in by
creating the flexibility to build open storage environments."

IBM achieved strong revenue growth in all regions for the fourth quarter of
2005, with external disk storage revenue growing by more than 40 percent
year to year in North America, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific, where it
tied for number one in market share, as measured by IDC. IBM also saw an
increase of more than 40 percent in the United States, as well as showing
worldwide revenue growth in all price bands. This included a 94 percent
increase from the fourth quarter of 2004 to the fourth quarter of 2005 in
the highest-level price bands(2), representing enterprise-class storage
systems.

Driven by compliance regulations and the benefits of Information on Demand,
businesses are turning to IBM for their storage needs. Recent IBM customer
wins include University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), University of
Wyoming, Palm Beach Community College and Schwenk Kement KG. Also in the
fourth quarter, IBM announced that its TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller
Solution (SVC) and IBM TotalStorage DS8300 both achieved tops scores for
performance as measured by the Storage Performance Council's latest
benchmark, SPC-2.(3)

About Information on Demand

The desire by businesses to access, manage, deliver, secure and store
information more efficiently is driving rapid change in the IT
marketplace. Traditional low-tech, hardware-only approaches by proprietary
vendors are meeting with resistance as companies grappling with new
government mandates and business demands strive to capture and integrate
information in a more seamless, real-time fashion across the enterprise.
IBM's information on demand approach combines deep business insight with
open standards, advanced storage systems, and sophisticated software for
information, security and IT system management to create cost effective and
flexible information infrastructures. Regardless of industry, IBM helps
companies transform data into insight to enable information on demand.

About IBM

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of
leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across
IBM and key IBM Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services,
solutions and technologies that help enable customers, large and small, to
take full advantage of the new era of e-business on demand. For more
information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com.

The IBM TotalStorage DS8300 submitted with 2 clusters each containing 4
Power 5 CPU processors and 32 gigabytes cache for a total of 64 gigabytes
cache. SPC-2 MBPS™: 3,217.53; SPC-2 Price-Performance: $539.38, ASU
Capacity: 6,957.847 GB; Data Protection Level: Mirroring; Audit
Certification Number: B00006, Availability Date: available today. See
http://www.storageperformance.org/results for more information. IBM, the
e-business logo, TotalStorage, SAN Volume Controller and DS8000 are
trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
All other company/product names and service marks may be trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.